T Lain - Plague of Ice

When the first day of winter came, it was as balmy and warm and sunny a day as Burrowling ever knew. Endra asked him for the first time why he was so scared of the cold. Burrowling admitted that he didn’t know, which made Endra weep.

“Why are you crying, Endra?” asked Burrowling. “Is it because you are so far away from your home and your family?”

“No,” Endra said. She put her hand against Burrowling’s cheek. It was cold as ice.

“I am the cold,” Endra explained. “I took halfling form to wander the world, and I fell in love with you, the halfling who fears me more than all things. Why? Why do you fear me so much?”

Burrowling cried, and his tears froze. He clutched Endra’s cold form in an embrace, and together the two of them transformed into solid ice. Their house changed into ice, and the ice spread over all the land. No longer the hottest of lands, Calandra felt its first winter, and its cold lingered ever since. The frozen forms of Burrowling and Endra, fused together for all time, stand there still.

As a child, Lidda had been greatly puzzled by the story of Burrowling and Endra. Perhaps its meaning was that people shouldn’t be afraid of the cold, but the image of Burrowling and Endra transformed into ice made Lidda fear the cold more. Many years had passed since she’d thought about it, but now it came back to her. Probably it meant nothing and was only a tale to entertain listeners. She wondered if she should share it with the others.

They heard a heavy, stomping noise in the distance. It was a series of hard clomps, one after another, emerging loudly from the snowy gloom. The haze was so thick they could hardly see in front of them, and the reverberations caused the snow to tremble all round them.

“Our dragon?” asked Hennet, “back for more?”

“No,” said Sonja. “It’s something on the ground. It sounds a little like a mammoth, but something that large couldn’t pass easily through these stumps.”

“So what could it be?” asked Lidda.

“Shh…” said Sonja. “It’s coming closer. Get ready.”

Regdar swiftly strung his longbow and readied an arrow. On his shoulders, Lidda did the same with her crossbow, while Hennet prepared to launch an arsenal of magic at whatever might appear from the white veil in front of them.

When it did arrive, the image was so nightmarish and unexpected that all of them hesitated. Even Sonja stared openmouthed at this new threat. A great scorpion was approaching them from the snowy gloom.

Lidda was the first to react as the monster scuttled forward. She fired her quarrel. It struck the frost-encrusted scorpion on one of its pincers but bounced off harmlessly, barely having made a mark. Regdar’s arrow struck harder and embedded itself in one of the creature’s legs but didn’t slow it at all. Hennet launched a spread of magic missiles, but these, too, had no apparent effect on the advancing monstrosity.

As it drew closer, they could see that this was not a giant scorpion coated in frost. Rather it was actually composed of solid ice.

“What do we do?” Hennet asked Sonja. She shook her head.

“I have a suggestion,” said the sorcerer. He pulled the wand from Atupal off his back. “Fire should do the trick.”

“Everyone get back!” the druid shouted.

They needed no more urging to speed away from the giant ice monster. Regdar clutched Lidda’s ankles with one hand, pinning them around his neck to keep her from being jounced off his shoulders. Looking back over her shoulder, Lidda saw that their foe nearly matched their pace. Its eight legs carried it above the tangled stumps at surprising speed.

Hennet also risked a look back. “Shall I do it now, or are we too close?”

Sonja shook her head. “We need more distance.”

But they didn’t seem to be increasing the distance. The scorpion showed no evidence of falling behind, and in fact it seemed to be gaining on them.

Looking back at this image of frozen fear, Lidda observed that it didn’t walk like a normal scorpion, small or large. The scorpions she’d seen generally kept their bodies close to the ground with their legs arched above. The stumps that littered the ground made that impossible here. Instead, this beast raised itself on its spindly legs to lift above the obstructions. She could see its belly, and that made her think… even a creature made of solid ice probably was more vulnerable on its underbelly than anywhere else.

“You want it slowed down?” Lidda asked. “Watch this.”

Swiftly she stood on Regdar’s shoulders and sprang backward to land feet-first. The snow reached up almost to her neck, but she used this to her advantage. She dropped to her knees and burrowed below the surface of the snow to conceal her exact location from the icy behemoth. She felt the cold intensify as the monster approached. When one of its legs speared through the snow beside her, she sprang forward and plunged headfirst under the icy body.

For all its terror, the scorpion was a thing of beauty when seen up close, like an intricate, gorgeous ice sculpture come to life. Every leg, tail section, and pincer looked as if it were carved from a single block of impossibly pure ice. Lidda could see right through the thing. The sight was distorted but unobstructed by any visible organs that might be vulnerable to attack.

She drew her sword and thrust upward with all the force she could manage. The blade penetrated the ice with a shower of chips, and Lidda pushed it in hilt-deep. No blood flowed, and the scorpion never made a sound, but it reacted in obvious pain, shuffling backward and trying to dislodge Lidda and the sword. The halfling held onto her weapon with all her might. She heard the clack of Regdar’s arrows striking the scorpion. She watched Hennet’s magic missiles strike the scorpion’s midsection. The ice refracted the image so that it looked to Lidda like a kaleidoscopic comet exploding into a carnival of light above her.

The scorpion tried to smash its body downward to crush Lidda, but the stumps beneath it prevented its weight from falling on her. Frustrated, it chased after the others but paused to lunge downward again any time it entered an area with fewer stumps. Lidda knew that it was only a matter of time before it found an area sufficiently bare to flatten itself, and her, against the frozen ground. She yanked on the sword but couldn’t free it, so she let go and slipped into the snow. Moments later, the creature maneuvered over a clear spot and flopped down, but all it succeeded in doing was driving Lidda’s sword even farther into its insides.

Lidda raced through the snow, plowing through drifts almost as tall as herself. She climbed atop one of the broken trees and leaped from stump to stump while waving furiously to the others. In its preoccupation with her, the scorpion had fallen behind the others, giving Hennet the room he needed to launch his fireball, if Lidda could get clear. Her short legs were no match for the nimble ice monster’s, though. Even with her sword driven into it, the scorpion was able to keep up with her. Part of her wished Hennet would just broil the damned thing and let her take her chances.

Regdar’s arrows and Hennet’s spells did little to deter the monster’s relentless pursuit.

“We have to stop it!” shouted Sonja. “It will catch Lidda and kill her!”

The druid looked at Hennet, standing at the ready with his wand of fire, wordlessly asking her for permission. She shook her head—there was too much risk of Lidda being caught in the blast. Sonja considered trying to draw a lightning bolt down from the storm, but she rejected the idea for the same reason. Her control over the spell was too coarse. She would only put them all at greater risk.

A cold smile crossed her face briefly. “Save that fireball,” she called to Hennet before sprinting away from the others and toward the unearthly monster.